Home Health & Hospice Week

Beware the fine print, however.Medicare has finally loosened up on some unnecessarily strict documentation requirements for face-to-face encounters with physicians. But just how loose the rules have gotten is under debate.In a new MLN Matters article, "A Physi-cian's Guide to Medicare's Home Health Certifica-tion, including the Face-to-Face Encounter," the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for the first time gives its official approval to physicians using checkboxes in their documentation of the F2F encounter. "The face-to-face documentation can include, or exist as, checkboxes so long as it comes from the certifying physician," CMS clarifies in the education document.This is an about-face from earlier CMS statements, which said checkboxes were not allowed and that physicians must write a narrative in their own words.Reminder: "For initial home health certifications, the certifying physician must document that the physician himself or herself, an allowed NPP, or a physician caring for the patient in an [...]